The African Orphan Crops Consortium has trained 161 African scientists to improve 101 underutilized crops, aiming to fight malnutrition and stunting. Their work could benefit 700 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.
Rangeland scientist Leslie Roche was named the Rustici Endowed Specialist in Rangeland Watershed Science, helping California ranchers address climate, water, and land-use challenges through collaborative research.
Truman Young retired as a professor and restoration ecologist from the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. His work has taken him to Africa and beyond, helping communities restore and manage landscapes.
Robert Hutmacher retired in 2022 as professor of the University of California Cooperative Extension, based in the Department of Plant Sciences. He is also the director of the UC West Side Research and Extension Center. His research has focused on cotton, primarily in California's San Joaquin Valley and other cotton-producing states.
Kent Bradford retired in 2019 as a distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Plant Sciences. He was the founding director of the UC Davis Seed Biotechnology Center. His research has focused on the development, maintenance and expression of seed quality.
UC Cooperative Extension specialist Louise Ferguson used her Webster Award to launch a leadership program for early career women faculty, helping them build self-awareness, peer networks, and tools for career advancement.
John Yoder retired as a professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences after building a career focused on parasitic weeds and developing crops that resist them.
Heinrich Lieth retired as a professor and University of California Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences. His work has focused on growing plants in greenhouses and similar protected structures.
Elizabeth Mitcham retires after 30+ years of improving postharvest practices, reducing food waste, and advancing global nutrition. She led UC Davis’ Feed the Future Innovation Lab and championed smallholder horticulture.
UC Davis alumnus Gurdev Khush won a $250K VinFuture Prize for co-developing disease-resistant rice strains now widely grown in Asia. His work has boosted global food security and cut pesticide use in tropical rice farming.
Sequencing the whitebark pine genome offers a powerful tool to restore this threatened, high-elevation species, improving disease resistance screening and climate adaptation in weeks instead of years—all at lower cost.
Graduate student Saskia Mesquida Pesci and lab manager Adrian Sbodio won a UC Davis Lab Safety Award for fostering a collaborative, inclusive safety culture in the Blanco-Ulate Lab, where communication, learning, and teamwork drive success.
UC Davis researchers developed "Google Weed View," an AI tool that uses Google Street View images to detect invasive johnsongrass. The model identified 2,000 locations at low cost and could soon scale to monitor weeds nationwide.
Alyssa Arias, a sophomore at UC Davis, passionate about agriculture, receives the "William and Charlotte Lider" and "2nd Lieutenant Warren R. Salz Memorial" scholarships. Inspired by family farming heritage, she majors in international agricultural development.
Two UC Davis Plant Sciences researchers—Eduardo Blumwald and Ming-Cheng Luo—were named 2023 “highly cited,” placing them among the top 1% of scientists whose work significantly influences global research.
